THE 'GORE VIDAL' YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT

by Adam J. Young

If one takes a truncated view of American politics, one can be forgiven for believing that Gore Vidal was a simple liberal. His works suggest such. The City and The Pillar, one of the first novels to deal with homosexuality, seems to argue that gender is a simple social construct. (Vidal disliked the term “homosexual” but he exemplified the hedonistic life style with his many partners, claiming he slept with over a 1000 men and women. A figure I don’t much doubt.)

POLITICS ARE THE REAL 'SPORTSBALL': ELECTION AS PSY-OP

by Andy Nowicki

Three Presidential elections ago, I wrote an article for The Last Ditch entitled “I Loathe Democracy.”

In that piece, composed just days prior to the W. vs. Kerry throw-down of ’04, I noted the “elementary error in logic in the very notion of trusting the majority,” which is after all the principle upon which democracy is predicated. But, I added, the dimensions of my vitriol wasn’t limited to a mere quibble over an unsound calculation:

POLITICS AND THE ART OF DOUBLING DOWN

by Alex Kirillov

I am going to preface this essay by admitting that I haven’t gambled in a very long time, and for some reason when I initially thought of the “doubling down” metaphor I only had a nebulous idea that it applied to card games. So, after typing this sentence I googled it and found that it relates, exclusively, to blackjack. I assume I’m in the minority of people who were unaware of this, however, there are lots of expressions we are carelessly using without any real knowledge of their etymological and, in the case of “double down,” metonymic origins.

LEFTY FILMIC SELF-CRITICISM: "THE IDES OF MARCH"

George Clooney bewares "The Ides of March"

by Alex Kirillov

The Ides of March is a haunting and prescient 2011 film that chronicles the rise of Pennsylvanian Governor Mike Morris, played by George Clooney, as he makes his way through the Democratic primaries. Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, Morris’s junior campaign manager. Early in the film, during an informal get together with his fellow campaigners and members of the press Meyers admits his personal conviction in support of Morris’s policies, and more significantly, in Morris himself as a genuine avatar of these views.

CRUZIN': A CONSPIRACY THEORY

Sexier (and scheme-ier) than you think he is?

by Andy Nowicki

Partisan politics are invariably poisonous. Indeed, boosterism breeds an ever-expansive propensity to a pernicious myopia. The more passionate one becomes in advocating for a particular candidate, the less that advocate is able to see, or care about, the truth; instead, such a one reflexively comes to believe, and just as reflexively to argue for, whichever “version” of the truth is most conducive to the likely success of one’s own candidate, and/or most presumably detrimental to the prospects of that candidate’s rivals.

But more is occluded than the fundamental ability, or willingness, to tease out fact, and conscientiously distinguish it from falsity. Another casualty of partisan punditry—whether carried out by the highest-paid, forever-flacking news television flunky or the merest envelope-licking volunteer—is a consequent inattention to subtlety. An enthusiastically compulsive partisan simply reacts to an event, rather than actually chewing it over; as a result, he frequently misses both the short-term truth of the matter and the long-term takeaway.

A case-in-point of this phenomenon is the reaction of partisans of various stripes to a recent National Enquirer piece, alleging that Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz is a serial adulterer.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GUN CONTROL (AND OTHER POLITICAL AFFECTATIONS)

by Michael Parish

In America, the discussion of political issues is an endless and perpetually inconclusive cycle: Party mouthpieces formulate stock arguments, and the media disseminates them to the rank and file, who then absorb and regurgitate them. They are then repeated ad nauseam whenever a well-publicized event returns the question to the limelight. Solutions are never discovered. This has been standard procedure for at least the last three generations, which, incapable of seeing outside the narrow parameters of bipartisan debate, accept it as the norm. But why?

Politics is not an academic discipline and does not involve the abstractions of that milieu; its matters and its terms are direct and concrete. Its subjects are familiar on a functional level to the majority of the population. If objective truth does exist then the questions being asked in the political milieu should end in objective answers. If Americans can calculate solutions to algebraic equations, they should certainly be able to do the same for poverty, crime, energy, and healthcare.

This has not happened, from which I infer two things: (1) that Americans are truly ignorant of what they speak about politically; and (2) their reason for engaging in political debate is self and partisan promotion, not the actual search for solutions.

CUCK YOU!

Don't be fooled; he's only out to cuck you, too.

by Andy Nowicki

Back in college, I spent two years in a dormitory called "Studio House," a residence hall for students with an interest in theater and the arts.

It wasn't anywhere near as faggy as it sounds, honest Injun.

The "Studio House" crowd, like most communities, developed its own distinctive lingo. Certain terms became hip and trendy, and caught on with nearly everyone. (I, however, was a consistently contrarian outlier on this front, being a curmudgeonly nonconforming grumpy old fogey even at the tender age of 19, albeit certainly vulnerable to manipulation in other ways.)

OUROBOROS

by Brett Stevens

Dogs, despite being nature’s kindest and most enthusiastic animals, have the baffling habit of chasing their tails. They notice the attraction and lunge for it, as if this discovery of themselves could give their lives meaning.

Reputedly, humans are more intelligent and not prone to such behaviors. After some years of experience in the world, I can no longer agree. We are the ultimate tail-chasers but, being social animals, we’ve found a way to pretend that we are not chasing our own tails if we project the image of a tail onto others.

WHITE MEN VOTE REPUBLICAN BECAUSE THEY'RE SUCKERS

by Jack Donovan

Amanda Marcotte recently wrote that “White men, as a group, vote Republican because they vote their resentments.”

The New York Times article she cited didn’t say or even imply anything about resentment. It did say that straight, working-class white men vote Republican because the Democratic Party has devoted the majority of its resources to appealing to women, gays and the various groups of less-white men who are nostalgically referred to as “minorities.” The Democratic Party has been on the opposite side of issues that working-class white men have cared about for decades, and according to the Times piece, many strategists within the party think it’s a waste of time trying to win them over.

Working-class white men vote Republican because the Democrats have made it clear that they care about representing the interests of everyone but working-class white men. These guys vote Republican because Republicans actually make an effort to tell them what they want to hear.

Basically, white men vote Republican because they’re suckers.